31 May 2017

Esquire has an article by Charles Pierce about more stupid kids with gubs:

On two occasions in the last week, local police officers have been confronted by potentially deadly attempts at what's become known as "suicide by cop", the ploy by which the criminally deranged try to create a threat serious enough for the police to shoot them dead. In Bogue Chitto, Mississippi, a man named Willie Godbolt shot and killed eight people, including a county sheriff's deputy, before being wounded by other police and taken into custody. (Godbolt was sufficiently uninjured to grant a reporter from the Jackson Clarion-Ledger an interview while handcuffed by the side of the road.) On Tuesday night, at Orlando International Airport, Michael Wayne Pettigrew waved what ultimately turned out to be a toy gun at officers who responded to Pettigrew's outburst. "Kill me," Pettigrew reportedly shouted at the police, who did not oblige him, but negotiated their way out of the stand-off without anyone's being shot by anyone else.Except in very extreme circumstances, suicide by cop should never work. Good solid police procedure should always prevail, as it did in these two situations. Godbolt, who'd already killed eight people, was rendered incapacitated, but just enough to be placed in custody, and Pettigrew was talked down from what appears to have been a mental breakdown. All of the police involved in these two incidents deserve as much praise as we can give them for exemplary public service. The two suspects now will face the legal consequences of their crimes, Godbolt's being obviously more serious than Pettigrew. Suicide by cop shares one characteristic with murder by cop: It usually only happens when procedure breaks down out of panic, or impatience, or, in far too many cases, racial animus.Which brings us back to Cleveland, Ohio, and the little gazebo in the playground where a twelve-year-old named Tamir Rice was killed by a cop who'd rolled up on him three seconds earlier. Like Michael Wayne Pettigrew, Rice had a toy gun. Unlike Michael Wayne Pettigrew, Tamir Rice is dead. On Tuesday, the Cleveland police officer who killed Rice, an incompetent rookie named Timothy Loehmann, was fired from the force, not because he played Wyatt Earp on a twelve-year old, but because he was as bad at paperwork as he was at policing. I am not joking about this. From Cleveland.com:

Tamir's mother promptly responded that the punishment was not enough. You see now-former officer Timothy Loehmann wasn't fired for shooting Tamir. The rookie officer was fired for not being completely forthcoming on his application to become a police officer. Samaria Rice said she was relieved, but not satisfied. She thought the firing should have come as a proximate result of the actions that led to her son's death. She also said Loehmann's training officer, Frank Garmback, should have been fired for his role in the events that led to the fatal shooting. Garmback was censured for driving the police cruiser too close to Tamir, forcing Loehmann's hand.

Right on cue, and because there are very few more sadly predictable figures in public life than the heads of police unions, Steve Loomis, the president of the Cleveland Police Patrolman's Association, expressed outrage that these two fine officers had been punished at all. From Cleveland.com:

"We have maintained from the outset that the death of Tamir Rice was, and is, tragic, but, as the decision-makers in this city know full well, his death was not caused by any failures of Officers Garmback or Loehmann," Loomis' statement says. "Both our officers reacted to the events that unfortunately unfolded before them. This is why Officer Loehmann was not charged criminally or with a single rule, policy, or training violation."(Actually, Loehmann wasn't charged because the Cuyahoga County prosecutor did everything he could to avoid doing so, and was rewarded by having his ass thrown out of office at the next election.)

The best refutation of what Loomis said comes in the fact that Willie Godbolt and Michael Wayne Pettigrew are still alive today. They are alive because the police who confronted them managed to stay cool and professional enough to follow their procedure and rely on what they were trained to do. They are alive because good cops declined their open invitation to kill them. Tamir Rice should have been so lucky.